Taking your Pinterest, Etsy, and Instructable ideas and giving you the low down on the cost, the time, and the skills it takes to make these at home!

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Scrabble Cookies

While trying to find unique Valentine's Day sweets, I came across this post on Instructables and thought, "That's perfect! It looks so easy and with so few ingredients needed, I'll give it a shot!" Little did I know this was a lot harder than it looked... still, if you want a unique treat, here's what you'll need:

First, make your sugar cookies, either from scratch or following the recipe on the back of the cookie mix. Once made, roll out the dough onto a floured surface to 1/4" thick. Make sure to flour your rolling pin, as it will get sticky.

Cut your tiles as small as you like. Regulation Scrabble tiles seem to be 3/4"x3/4" but I made some smaller and some larger than that. Totally up to you how big to size your cookies.

Once they're all cut, I recommend placing them on parchment paper, though you certainly don't have to. I was able to make 114 cookie squares.

Place them in the oven for 8-9 minutes at 375 degrees. Once they're done baking, let them cool and start on the icing. I decided to follow this recipe for royal icing and you will have a LOT of leftover icing so I recommend cutting the recipe in half. However, if you want to make the full recipe and save some icing for later, mix 3 egg whites in a mixer until they're frothy. Then add 1 cup of powdered sugar at a time.

Once all the sugar is added, place the mixer on high until the icing peaks. It'll take a little while, about 5 minutes, so don't be discouraged if it's too runny at first.

Now frosting these little squares as perfectly as the original post was not easy. I tried different methods, to see what worked best:

Worst method: trying to frost X's on a bunch, then going back and spreading them with a toothpick. The reason this didn't work was because the frosting hardened so fast that it ended up looking like a mess.

OK method: frosting one at a time and using a toothpick to smooth it out. It was really time consuming but it did the job.

Best method: Frosting thick outlines and then the inside of the squares all in one swoop.

Once the frosting hardens, which doesn't take long at all, best of luck in piping on the letters and numbers. You need a really steady hand, especially if your tiles are small. And I only ended up piping a quarter of the tiles because it was so time-consuming.

Play a round of Scrabble with your friends, your partner, whoever you like and try not to eat your hand!

TOTAL COSTS: About $18 to make 114 cookies (if you don't own any of the ingredients - prices from Vons)
$2.50 for sugar cookie mix
$1.99 for powdered sugar
$2.99 for black icing gel
$2.39 for eggs
$.99 for butter
$4.99 for vanilla
$1.99 for flour

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: About 2 1/2 hours
1 hour and 30 minutes to make dough, cut into tiles, and bake
15 minutes to make icing
30 minutes to frost all the tiles
15 minutes to pipe on letters (though I only got through a quarter of the tiles)

EASY-PEASY SCALE (1 super easy - 5 very difficult): 4 out of 5
If you don't have a steady hand, the letters and numbers will come out uneven and your lines won't be straight. If you go in not expecting this to look exactly like the original post, then you'll have fun and will make something your friends and family will enjoy!